I am working on creating a limited collection of quilted wall hangings that will be up for sale on my website soon. As I’ve been working through these stitches, I’ve been thinking a lot about inspiration: where it comes from and what exactly the word means.

This summer, I have been able to “clock in” to my sewing studio with decent regularity (summers off being one of the great perks of being an educator). This regularity has brought space (mental/physical/metaphorical) for my mind to work over more and more ideas for sewing. 

I sit down to sew–inevitably, I have more ideas about sewing. How might I stitch this piece? Should these lines go vertically or horizontally? How would I try this technique again on a different pattern? What can I try next?

I think these types of exploratory questions are what some might call inspiration. And they mostly come to me when I am already in the act of creating.

So maybe we aren’t meant to wait for inspiration to start–instead, we might be meant to start and listen for questions to arise and try our best to answer them with our hands.